A Study of Open Educational Resources

The Internet has opened up the gates of innovation and accessibility. Technology has seeped into the very fabric of our everyday lives and transformed the way we do things. Education was not left behind. It synced well with the symphony that technology cooked up, showering on us a harmonious blend of ease and effectiveness.

The rapid changes in education have stunned us every day. We cannot imagine a day in our lives without the computers and the tablets and all the incredible implementations that technology has brought to the classroom. The digital age has given a whole new meaning to education. It has paved the way for a more progressive and meaningful experience in the classroom.

With the integration of technology in the classroom, resourcefulness triumphed. Tapping the internet for information has become more like gulping down a mouthful of water. We do it every day at certain intervals without even thinking twice about it.

One of the many boons of technology has been Open Educational Resources (OERs).

Wondering what that is? Let’s have a look.

What are OERs?

If the Internet is your everyday academic savior, chances are you have stumbled upon a few OERs by now.

Open Educational Resources are learning resources that are available on the Internet for free and can be used and modified by the users according to their requirements. These tools are released under an Intellectual Property Right (IPR) that allows their ‘open’ usage and distribution.

OERs could be anything among:

• full courses
• textbooks
• course materials
• recorded lectures
• reading lists
• projects
• videos
• tests or assignments

The primary difference between Open Educational Resources and other online resources is that online resources are not openly licensed, whereas OERs are. OERs bring in a complete flexibility in the adaptation of the resources. The best part is, you can publish the content with your modifications on the Internet. Rest assured, the license police will not knock down your door.

OERs are highly useful and loaded with information. If you have not included OERs in your classroom, you are missing out on an important resource.

Things to Consider Before Using an OER

There are a few things that you need to keep in mind before using an OER.

1. How to identify an OER?

First things first, you need to know for sure that you are using an OER and not any other online resource. Generally, OERs come with a Creative Commons (CC) license. But there’s a catch. There exists a wide variety of CC licenses. These mostly differ in the permissions available.

Some licenses allow you to:

• make modification to the content
• share the work for commercial purposes and so on

And some don’t. So you would need to be extra careful in identifying this.

For more information, you can visit the Creative Commons website.

1. How to legally use an OER?

Another important aspect to keep in mind while using Open Educational Resources is the right clearance procedure. I have already mentioned that OERs are released under an Intellectual Property Right (IPR).

Your job would be to identify who own the IPR of the resource you have been blown away by. Once you do that, you need to ask for permission to release it. If granted, you can use it the way you want.

1. What are the specifications of an OER?

If you are converting an existing resource into an OER, it is important to be aware of the correct specifications. These are as follows:

Where to Find Open Educational Resources?

With information filling up every nook and corner of the digital space, the market of Open Educational Resources has seen a considerable expansion. You would find a number of OERs dotting the Internet. All you need to know is where to look.

Since the Internet is a massive playground, we are going to give you a head start. Following is a lowdown on a few of the popular OERs on the Internet:

1. OER Commons

At OER Commons, you would find free teaching resources curated from around the world. It covers open resources on a wide range of subjects meant for K-12 education, career development, adult education and so on. OER Commons also has a search filtering criteria of ‘Standard’. In this, you can choose among:

• Next Generation Science Standards
• Common Core State Standards Math
• Common Core State Standards English Language Arts

The content available here is completely reliable since they have been gathered from trusted organizations and individuals.

1. OpenEd

OpenEd is one of the most popular OERs for teaching K-12 students. It contains over a million Common Core videos, assessments and games. The assessments in the OER are adaptive and come up with succeeding assessment suggestions for every student based on his/her performance in the previous one. This feature is also called Resource Backed Assessments. So it saves you the hard work of evaluating every student’s performance in class and come up with ideas for the next test.

What makes it all the more convenient is the fact that it is a single source of easy-to-navigate educational information for all K-12 requirements. Apart from that:

• OpenEd has an array of individualized lessons and games for every student to aid in their learning process.
• Its rich library of educational videos, lessons assessments and games is self-sufficient and ensures that every student’s instructional needs are met.
• Its super responsive design allows you to access it easily from any device, be it a tablet, a phone or a desktop.

In short, OpenEd is a complete guide for K-12 academic requirement.

1. Open Culture

Open culture boasts a copious assortment of free:

• ebooks
• audio books
• textbooks
• language lessons
• online courses
• movies and so on

Open Culture offers an enriched collection of educational content that is useful and highly effective.

1. OER Knowledge Cloud

OER knowledge Cloud is a complete collection of journal articles, reports, books and so on. These have been curated by professional librarians and volunteers. With an aim to provide users with valuable sources to fulfill their academic requirements, OER Knowledge Cloud has built up its repository with high quality and updated documents.

The numerous benefits include:

• Easy access to research data, information and the likes
• Efficient storage and management of the vast database of resources
• The employment of its very own Gap Analysis to identify gaps and overlaps in research

1. MIT Open Courseware

Launched in the year 2001, this is a virtual publication of all course contents of the Massachusetts University of Technology (MIT). The database is immensely useful for teachers and students alike. This fact is evident from the popularity of the website. With over 2000 courses to its name, MIT Open Courseware boasts over 170 million visitors.

If you are a regular on the internet, you will come across a number of OERs here and there. You can also check out this list of OERs for more information.

Benefits of Using Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resource is the key to pedagogical innovations. OERs are the next leap in taking education a step further. They offer a number of educational benefits.

Some of these have been discussed as follows:

• Open Educational Resources are either free or are available at a minimum cost, which is a stark contrast to the expensive books that students are required to buy. Therefore, this reduces the cost of education drastically.

• OERs open up a vast database of quality courses that cover a wide range of topics. This greatly enhances learning opportunities for students.

• Some of the OERs come with tests and quizzes. This helps students to evaluate their comprehension and retention. What more, adaptive assessments help in bringing up personalized tests based on the performance of the students.

• Open Educational Resources can be modified according to your classroom requirements and republished on the Internet. Since different students have different academic needs, these cater to a wide array of students who depend on the OERs.

• Since OERs are disseminated freely, they trump the accessibility card. So OERs provide an extended reach of quality education to the global classroom.

Open Educational Resources usher in a certain level of diversity in the progressive education. The concept of OERs is a step in the right direction to make education a lot more accessible and economical.

Have you utilized Open Educational Resources in teaching? Share those with us in the comments section below. We would love to hear from you.